Thursday's Child
by Verboten Byacolate
Summary: But you are a man, and she is a woman, and you live in her home and sleep in her bed. She feels the bedding was inevitable. Fin/fem!Su, Åland and Sealand


A little impromptu gift for Tamer Lorika as a thank you for all your encouragement and kindness. Thug life forever~!

* * *

She never complained about it, and he was away so often with battles and trade agreements that he never knew until it had been made so obvious that it could never have been mistaken for anything other than what it was.

Sweden had agreed, months before, that it was a good idea for him to go fend off the overactive, obnoxiously ambitious Russians. Finland had been surprised at first; _Sverige_, sending him off to a potentially dangerous situation? _Sverige_, loosening her protective grip on his leash? After so many months of being kept indoors while she was off at war, the opportunity was too good to be true. He was a whirlwind of preparation, packing the necessities, slipping into his full military regalia, pack and rifle over his shoulders, and with little more than a grin and a peck on her cheek, he was out the door and into the snow.

She had watched him go silently, a hand over the quasi-flatness of her stomach, jaw set.

It was for the best, she was sure.

The spring and summer passed in the excitement of battle, and Finland didn't think he could be happier. He had missed the adrenaline, the exhilaration that came with defending one's homeland at the side of brothers and neighbors alike. Correspondence with Sweden was just as short, clipped and impersonal as her normal speech, and so he never thought to worry or give the one-page reports from home any second thoughts.

Estonia found him at the front lines one autumn morning, and a lightly bruised but invigorated Tino slapped him on the back and invited him into his tent for a drink; cheap vodka smuggled in by his best men.

"I don't know whether to congratulate you or to steer clear of the subject," Eduard began, piquing Tino's curiosity a few hours in. He was pleasantly clueless. Estonia thought he was playing. "Your, aha, _husband_." Tino's joviality turned dry in a moment, and his friend laughed, a little drunk. "She's gotten so big, they finally forced her off the field," he chortled.

"Egotism?"

"Wartime comedian, are you?"

Finland's winter-chapped fingers tightened around the wooden cup, his smile strained. Estonia carried on, and within just a few more moments, any doubt was shoved roughly from Tino's mind.

The very next morning he set off for the sturdy cabin he called both prison and home—the very same he had escaped just months before.

He found her on the edge of the bed up the stairs, struggling to pull on her own stockings. The surprise was evident on her face as he stood in the open doorway, his eyes on the swell of her belly. Her thick shawl could not hope to hide the size of it. Sweden said nothing, her lips pressed into a thin line, simply watching and waiting.

He staggered to her, the feet in his boots heavier than he remembered, and before her, he fell to his knees.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked quietly, weakly. Svea smoothed the skirts over her knees, her hands folded and eyes pointed down. She didn't answer, for loss of words or lack of reasoning, he didn't know. "Sve. Talk to me, please. Please." Finland swallowed thickly, questions and thoughts skittering around in his mind like nervous mice. "Is it…?"

"Yours," she said, a little bit gentle, a little bit fierce, as if she was trying to calm and convince in the same breath. "No one else."

"Ah."

The tension was thick, an unnecessary quilt smothering his sense and her words. She broke it, surprising them both.

"Thought y'd linger on th' field," she confessed quietly and without meeting his eyes.

"For how long?" he asked, a sort of numb hysteria building behind his tone.

"Half a decade, 't least."

"What? Why?"

"Knew y'wanted t'be gone," she answered awkwardly, her brows scrunched up. "Not here, 't least." It was an unfamiliar thing, all this talking and expecting responses—normally Finland would become frustrated with her unresponsiveness and just stop trying. Her kings, too, merely spoke _at_ her, playing their roles over her as "superiors" until they died and she remained, on to the next and the next and the next, all of them the same. Feelings were things she kept inside, things women were supposed to seal away, precious and hidden and hurtful. For all the years of just watching the interactions between people, for the life of her she could not decipher Finland's expression.

"What…" He tried to swallow, the inside of his mouth dry and cottony. "You weren't going to try do this alone, Sve."

"'Course." It was matter of fact and resolved and pierced him swiftly like a blade.

"But it's mine!"

He felt like a petulant child; she, a worn mother.

"Fin. Y' don't need to." He was tired, so tired of being met with the whites of her eyes as the blue was shifted toward the wall and the lantern and the floor and everywhere but him.

He thought he understood perfectly what she meant—that she did not trust him to properly father a child. That she no longer needed him. That she never really had.

Finland left the house Sweden had built, in his anger kicking over the coatrack and slamming the door. Sweden's eyes, finally on him through the window, crept up his spine and low into his gut. The hollow feeling scooped out a residency in his stomach, and it was not until he had shot seven rounds into a tall evergreen trunk that he had begun to calm.

* * *

He could not go back to the war, would not go back to the house, and thought himself lucky that he had someone near and dear to consult.

Norway opened the door to him and let him in, but Finland could feel all through his spine the chilly reception in Norway's eyes.

As Tino had suspected, the pale nation was not clueless in any sense of the word; he neither skirted the subject nor played the fool. "I know why you're here," he began directly once Tino had made himself comfortable at the Swede-crafted kitchen table. Finland glanced up, not quite startled, nor totally alert. "And I know what you're thinking. But why don't you tell me anyway."

Tino swallowed a bit of the thin tea that Norway had set before him.

"Why doesn't she trust me to… to father it?"

"Why should she?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Tino blinked over the table at Norway owlishly. He didn't give a response back that gave any indication or expel any secrets. Tino bit the inside of his cheek. Norway lifted his own mug.

"Believe it or not, she would love nothing more than to keep the child with you."

His fingers tighten around the mug. "I doubt that," he confessed bitterly. "You did not hear what she said to me."

"And what did she say to you?"

He grimaced. "When I asked her if she intended to raise the child alone, she told me, 'Of course.'" The memory left a foul taste in his mouth, an aftertaste fare bitterer than that left by the tea. Norway only shook his head, smooth blond fringe falling over his forehead.

Tino felt like he was missing something obvious, and frustration simmered hotly in the back of his throat.

"She felt—feels—the bedding was inevitable."

"Inevit—she terrified me for centuries!"

"But you are a man, and she is a woman, and you live in her home and sleep in her bed. She has always believed that it is expected of her to cater to your needs." At Norway's look of dry obviousness, Tino blushed. He felt that the conversation had reached a point where he knew what was in Norway's mind, one shallow tunnel of thought, but the rest was hidden, even while Norway could see through him like a pane of glass.

"She has never told me… anything like that. I've never known." Finland shook his head and tapped the cup against the hardwood table. "How am I supposed to know what to say or think? How should I know what to do—what's best for her, or what she wants?"

"They could very well be the same thing."

"I've always been so afraid," he said softly, a gentle frown marring his features. Norway's eyes were cold over the rim of his mug.

"I know you'd never think of it on your own, so I'll let you borrow a thought." Norway sat back, his fingers tangled in his lap. "Perhaps Svea is more afraid of you than you ever were of her."

* * *

She met him with little surprise, as if she had known that he would return. She probably had.

"C'me in," she mumbled, stepping back to allow him to enter. A summer wind led him on, pushing him forward, and to his amazement and her bewilderment, he came forward and took all of her in his arms. It was no easy feat, she being two and a half times as wide as normal, but in all of her roundness firmness and the strength of her spine, he could feel the frailty of her. It warmed and frightened him all at once.

He wondered then if it was the baby's kick, the flood of hormones, or something else entirely, but very suddenly her body began to throb and shake as an accompaniment to her poorly concealed sniffles. He laughed and cried with her, and after a long few minutes, he reached up to hold her wet face in his palms.

And then, and then.

And then he offered love. He offered acceptance and apology and he promised with a shameful softness that he wouldn't be afraid anymore, and that he would love and give and love when he could no longer give, and she wept as the summer air swept into the room and between each individual strand of pale hair, but not between the two of them, over and under their child.

The sweet scent of late summer and lingonberry tea filled the cottage, their little home, with hope. With a new beginning. With an understanding that no matter what would come, at that moment, nothing could break such a heavy sweetness apart.

* * *

"You replaced me with a _girl_?" Sealand cried in the doorway, his jaw halfway to the floor. Sweden and Finland exchanged glances and the tall, thin woman with pale hair all the way down to her shoulders at the kitchen table with them smirked. She answered something in quick Swedish, and no matter how he tried the boy could not decipher it. His eyes lit upon his adoptive parents faces and Finland gave him a gentle berating frown. "Peter, this is Aleksanteri."

"Alexander," both Sweden and the other corrected in tandem, almost mechanically. Finland's expression became strained.

"… or Åland. He's your _brother_."

Peter whined, "There's no way. He's too pretty. You had an older kid without me?"

Svea sipped at her coffee and said something to the slender boy in Swedish, earning a boisterous laugh in return. Before Sealand could feel too left out, she beckoned him over to sit on her lap and held him there gently. "L'ks like y'r mama, doesn't he?" she said near his ear. He considered this for a moment, taking in the stranger's open expression, the sweet curve of lips in his smile. He nodded. "Had that pretty thing in m' stomach f'r nine months."

"Sve!" Finland said, his cheeks rosy.

" '_He'_ has your eyes, Papa," Sealand observed, poking her arm. She shook her head.

"No. Not s' sharp."

"Not so _pretty_," he corrected, leaning back against her breasts. "But he has got your eyes." Peter looked up through his lashes at Finland. "Why were you two arguing before?"

"Because Aleks is an obstinate brat," Finland answered, throwing a pointed look at Åland. "He won't even negotiate in Finnish with me. I was just trying to remind him of everything I've ever done for him. It gets a bit violent, dear."

Åland muttered something to Svea, who returned with something short and clipped. It reminded Peter of the tone she used when he left his toy soldiers on the living room floor and Finland hurt his feet stepping on them. Åland's pout reflected his own, and he seem to concede to Tino's demands, as the Finn visibly perked up. Peter looked up at Sweden and jostled her arm to get her attention. "Does Mama not like that guy?" he asked.

"No," she answered. "W've had our dis'greem'nts like all families do, but they love each other very much. J'st like we love y'."

"Disagreements?"

"Tell y' 'bout it 'nother time. 'S a real long story."

Sealand didn't know whether Åland didn't know English, or if he just wasn't speaking any to make him mad, but when the slender man was buttoning up his jacket, he smiled and saluted to Sealand. "_Adjö __så_, Sealand."

"Yeah yeah, _hej d__å_ to you, too, lady."

Åland laughed, tussled his hair and kissed Sweden goodbye before he left. It didn't escape Peter's notice that Finland hadn't received much of a farewell at all. He took Sweden's hand and gave her a look. "Are you _sure_ they love each other?"

"Can't leave 'im alone f'r some reas'n." Svea chuckled, patting Finland's shoulder as she sat back down.

Finland shook his head with a little smile, lifting the mug to his lips. "Well, he does have your eyes."

* * *

Believe it or not, I really enjoy writing dickhead!Finland. In fact, I extended it just to write more of him. I mean, I love him when he's all sugar, spice and everything nice, but there's still that part of him that's a total buttmunch. You know the one I'm talking about—the one that freaks out, even in present day, at Sweden's expressions, and calls him scary even though Sve is a total sweetheart. But maybe that's just my bias towards Sweden.  
Probably.


End file.
